As said, the treaty of peace was signed on December 24, 1814. But it had to be ratified by both Governments, and the news that peace had been declared had to be promulgated throughout the world before hostilities would cease. There were battles not a few thereafter. The Yankee sailor was to be heard from on the sluggish waters of the Mississippi’s swamps; under the bleak cliffs of Tristan d’Acunha, on the sunlit seas of India, and elsewhere. He did not always triumph, but his flag did not come down save at the behest of greatly superior numbers; and this chapter shall tell how it came down in the first naval contest after the treaty was signed.
Commodore Stephen Decatur.
It was on the unlucky President when she was commanded by Stephen Decatur. As the reader will recall, Decatur was blockaded with the United States, the Macedonian, and the Hornet at New London by a British squadron, beginning in June, 1813. There the two frigates remained until the end of the war. Late in 1814 Decatur was transferred to the President, then in New York harbor. Rodgers had had the ill luck to make four cruises in her without ever having a battle or even taking enough merchantmen to pay the expense of keeping the ship in commission. A very excellent revision of an old proverb says that “all things come to him who ‘rustles’ while he waits.” It is a fact that the active aggressive men of the navy in that war did not have much bad luck.
Decatur, when in command of the President, was ordered to take the little sloop-of-war Hornet, Captain James Biddle, and the new Yankee corvette Peacock, Captain Lewis Warrington, and go on a cruise to the East Indies, as Captain Bainbridge with the Constitution, the Essex, and the Hornet had started to do. Accordingly, having appointed the island of Tristan d’Acunha as a rendezvous, Decatur sailed out of New York harbor with a substantial northerly gale to help him, on the night of January 14, 1815. The gale had prevailed long enough to blow the blockading squadron clear of Sandy Hook, and all went well until the ship was crossing the bar, when, by a mistake of the pilots, she struck the sand. There was enough of a sea rolling to lift and drop the big ship on the bar and for an hour and a half she lay there pounding. By that time the tide had raised her and over she went, though very much “hogged and twisted.” That is she had literally broken her back, and her fair shape was warped into an irregular one.
Because of the wind Decatur was compelled to go to sea. Skirting the Long Island coast for about fifty miles he concluded he must be clear of the British squadron, and so headed away on his course for Tristan d’Acunha. As it happened, Captain John Hayes, commanding the British blockading squadron, had calculated that any ship leaving New York would try to get to sea by hugging the Long Island coast, on the theory that the British would be blown away down the Jersey beach; so he had kept his squadron “bucking the gale” off the Long Island coast, and thus it happened that when Decatur eased his sheets to run away on his course, he ran right into the British squadron.
The British squadron included the razee Majestic (a cut-down liner); the frigate Endymion, that had been built to meet the big Yankees and was armed as they were, with long twenty-fours; the ordinary (eighteen-pounder) frigate Pomone, and the ordinary frigate Tenedos. There was also a brig, but it had no part in the fight.
It was just before daylight when the enemy were seen. Decatur hauled up to the wind and headed for the east end of Long Island, but the President was seen by the British and the whole squadron went after her. The good judgment of Captain Hayes was going to win him a ship. As the President stood away, the Majestic and the Endymion were directly astern, with the Pomone on the port and the Tenedos on the starboard quarter. The wind still held strong, and the Majestic led the Endymion and gained on the President enough to warrant an occasional shot. Then the wind slackened and the Pomone outsailed all the rest, until Captain Hayes blundered by supposing the Tenedos was also a Yankee and sent the Pomone after her, thus prolonging the chase of the President.
However, in the afternoon the wind became light and baffling, and this was the weather for the Endymion. Decatur had done everything possible to lighten ship except throwing over his guns. Anchors, boats, spare spars, provisions, and water had all been thrown overboard, but in vain, and soon after 4 o’clock the Endymion was firing her bow chasers and the President her stern chasers with some effect. The Endymion, proving the swifter, was able to reach forward until on the President’s quarter. There she could shoot the President to pieces without receiving a shot in return, and for half an hour she held that position, while Decatur held on, hoping the Endymion would range up for a close conflict.
But no such move as that was in the mind of the Englishman. Captain Hope, who commanded her, was not guilty of the “uncircumspect gallantry” of which Sir Howard Douglas wrote so feelingly. So Decatur determined on a desperate move. Calling the crew aft, he addressed them, so it is said, as follows: